In digital cellular radio systems, each cell is a local geographic region containing a base station and a plurality of mobile users. Each mobile user communicates directly with a base station only; there is no direct mobile-to-mobile communication. The base station performs, among other things, a relay function allowing a mobile user to communicate with a user in another location. So, for example, the base station provides coupling of a mobile user's transmission to another mobile user in the same cell, to another base station for coupling to a mobile user in another cell, or to an ordinary public switched telephone network. In this way, a mobile user can send and receive information to and from any other addressable user.
Direct Sequence CDMA (DS-CDMA) techniques are attracting widespread attention in the personal communication fields, such as, for example, digital cellular radio. In a DS-CDMA cellular system, both the time and frequency domains may be shared by all users within a cell simultaneously. This simultaneous sharing of time and frequency domains is to be distinguished from time-division and frequency-division multiple access systems, TDMA and FDMA, where multiple user communication is facilitated with use of unique time slots or frequency bands, respectively, for each user.
In DS-CDMA cellular systems, a base station may simultaneously transmit distinct information signals to separate users using a single band of frequencies. Individual information signals simultaneously transmitted in one frequency band may be identified and isolated by each receiving user because of the base station's utilization of unique signature sequences in the transmission of the information signals. Prior to transmission, the base station multiplies each information signal by a signature sequence signal assigned to the user intended to receive the signal. To recover a transmitted signal from among those signals transmitted simultaneously in a frequency band, a receiving mobile user multiplies a received signal (containing all transmitted signals) by its own unique signature sequence signal and integrates the result. By so doing, the user identifies that signal intended for it, as distinct from other signals intended for other users in the cell.
Further details of the DS-CDMA technique in the cellular radio context are presented in K. S. Gilhousen et al., On the Capacity of a Cellular CDMA System, Vol. 40 I.E.E.E. Trans. Vehicular Tech. 303-12 (May 1991). In addition, a discussion of the use of DS-CDMA in the personal communications arena is presented in J. T. Taylor and J. K. Omura, Spread Spectrum Technology: A Solution to the Personal Communications Services Frequency Allocation Dilemma, Vol. 29, No. 2 I.E.E.E. Communications 48-51 (February 1991).
The ability of a user in a cell to isolate transmitted information signals intended for it (free from interference due to simultaneous transmission to other users) is dependent on the availability of orthogonal signature sequences for all users in the cell. In a given DS-CDMA cellular system with a given bandwidth and a large number of users, it may not be possible to provide a set of signature sequences for all users which are mutually orthogonal to each other. If a completely mutually orthogonal set of signature sequences is not available for all users in the cell, multiple access interference (MAD results. MAI may be thought of as a type of "cross-talk" interference which results from an inability to completely isolate a desired information signal from all other transmitted signals in the cell.
The MAI seen by a particular user is approximately proportional to the total number of users in the DS-CDMA system. Because increasing the number of users causes an increase in the number of communication errors, the performance of DS-CDMA cellular systems with large numbers of users is essentially limited by the level of MAI.
To reduce MAI in situations where the number of users exceeds the number of available mutually orthogonal signature sequences, conventional DS-CDMA systems have utilized binary signature sequences having "good" cross-correlation properties. This implies signature sequences which are close to being mutually orthogonal. However, for a given system bandwidth, there are only a limited number of binary signature sequences having good cross-correlation properties. This places a certain limit on the number of users (i.e., capacity) of the system. Because the number of users of cellular and personal communication systems is expected to grow rapidly in the next few years, new techniques for increasing the capacity of such systems are in demand.